THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE: Advice for Deleted Commenters, From a Puppy

[Sady is trying very hard to be a nicer and less confrontational person. However, she still sometimes gets bad Internet comments! And is, of course, tempted to respond to them, which really takes a toll on the whole “nice” project. Therefore, we are introducing a new Tiger Beatdown comment moderator: Hektor, An Adorable Puppy. He will be looking through your comments and personally deciding whether or not they are stupid. On the occasion of a particularly stupid comment, he will opine.]

Hello, Internet people! My name is Hektor. And soon you will know my wrath.

But before we begin, there are a few things you ought to know. First: I’m an adorable puppy. Like, really really super adorable. Check this shit out:

WHOA. THAT IS AN ADORABLE FUCKING PUPPY, RIGHT THERE. You just want to nuzzle him, and pet his head, and toss him a tennis ball, and feed him treats, and feed him more treats, and procure for him the finest of beef steaks, and then feed that to him, and then give him additional treats, and… wait, what? Sorry. I got distracted.

Anyway: Adorable puppy. Me. I’m glad we got that sorted. So, here is the second thing you need to know: You all work for me now.

So, I don’t really get the Internet. I mean, what the fuck are you people doing all day? Typing into boxes? Reading the typing of other people, in additional boxes? Looking at pictures of cats? FUCK PICTURES OF CATS. Here, I’ve got a cat picture for you:

Oh, snap! That’s not a picture of a cat at all! That’s a picture of me, and therefore is way better!

One thing I do know about the Internet, however, is that people get really sour there. Sometimes, they get so very sour that they absolutely have to leave a blog comment about it. And sometimes, those comments are really, really stupid! And sometimes people get really, really defensive about their comments being stupid! People don’t like to be told where to stick it, basically. You know what they do like, though: ADORABLE PUPPIES. Of which I am one. Therefore, whenever it is time to tell someone where to stick it, I think it will be easiest for all of us if the news comes from me. Because what are you going to do? Hate me? You would seriously hate an adorable puppy? YOU MONSTER.

Ok, so I have read this article and you cannot be further off the mark. I am a southern man who was raised with the idea of “Southern Gentleman” taught to me. Here is the deal. Chivalry is actually a form or respect for women.

Yes, Dustin, a “form of respect!” Much like wandering around on the Internet until you find a blog post you disagree with, then taking a big stinky hundreds-of-words-long dump all over it! That seems super fucking respectful to me! I have an idea, Dustin: Since you’re so into the South and being Southern, why don’t you move even further South? Why don’t you go all the way South… TO HELL.

(You know what I hear they have a lot of, in Hell? Cat pictures.)

(I’M JUST SAYING.)

(THE TRUTH HURTS.)

We don’t open doors for women because they are weak. We don’t defend women because they cannot defend themselves. We don’t do it for the honor.

If I see a 130lb woman in a bar being mistreated by a 300lb meathead I am more than likely to try to defend her. There is a reason for that. It is not that she cannot defend herself. For all I know she may be a friggin black-belt special forces assasin, but I can see little things about 300lb meathead that most women either cannot or do not pick up on.

Oh, yeah. You know, that well-established tendency of women to just stand there and let themselves be treated badly because they’re too stupid to notice it! Or to get scared! Women seriously have no self-protective instinct, dude. You can basically sit a woman in the middle of the road and run her over with a truck if you want. “What is that large, noisy metal object coming at my face?” She’ll be thinking. “I’m sure it means well, in any case!” That is why we respect women: They are not smart, never try to defend themselves, and cannot take care of themselves unless a man tells them what to do.

Wait. That doesn’t seem right.

It’s the way the veins move in his neck and head, the way his pupils dialate, the way he breaths and his nostrils move. These things indicate to other men that this particular meathead has violence in his mind. I could even look at meathead and tell you what kind of violence, just by these little cues. I can look at him and tell that he intends to harm and rape the lady he is harassing.

Holy shit, you guys! Dustin has SUPERPOWERS! I think he might be the Batman! Or the Spiderman! Or the X-Man! I don’t know, I’m like five months old, I don’t read comics. (“Hektor, you got that comic reference totally wrong!” — Serious comic-book-reading Internet people. “Arf arf grr snargle pee.” — Hektor.) He is some kind of Man, in any case. He left a whole fucking comment about it, so I’m pretty sure.

Let us be clear, Dustin: I’m a fucking dog. I crap on the street. I eat meat-flavored crackers out of a bowl. My immediate response, upon encountering any new and intriguing object, is to put it RIGHT THE FUCK IN MY FACE and chew on it. I have, on more than one occasion, rolled around in my own feces; I can figure out how to go up stairs, but not how to go down them. What the hell is that, opposite stairs?

No.

My point is, Dustin, I’m a simple dude. I don’t think deeply about things. There’s a lot I haven’t figured out. Mostly I coast on the whole “adorable puppy” thing. But even I know that the passing city bus is a terrible monster and wants to eat me and I must run, RUNNNNNNN AWAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY; even I, that is, get scared when I see something dangerous. The only reason anyone would not be scared of danger is that it looks like something else; like, maybe if it looks, Dustin, like what they see every day.

So, like, here I am, projecting myself into the mind of a human chick. It’s a stretch! And yet, I manage! I am a human chick, and I’ve been told that I have to get dudes to do everything for me, from paying for dinner to opening the door to protecting me from danger to telling me what does and does not constitute danger and what I am allowed to do about it; I’ve also been told that dudes can and should be aggro, when they’re doing stuff for me. As a human chick, I get treated a lot like a dog, actually! But, like, a dog with a multitude of really bad, mean owners. And here I am, standing in front of an aggro dude who seems like he wants to tell me what to do. But, like, aren’t all dudes aggro? And don’t they all want to tell me what to do? Aren’t I basically not allowed to make my own decisions? Shouldn’t I stand here and wait until a dude comes along to settle the situation?

Seems to me, Dustin, that chivalry doesn’t “protect” female helplessness at all. Seems to me, Dustin, that chivalry causes it. I mean, you know, you can go on ahead fist-fightin’ with the dudes and using your magically keen super-senses to psychically detect criminals. But, as an adorable puppy, I have some very keen senses myself. And right now, I’m getting a really strong scent of Douche.

This was written by Hektor the Adorable Puppy. Posted on Tuesday, June 8, 2010, at 3:34 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

31 Comments

There’s a difference between speech, in which interjections like “um” and “er” are natural and understandable, and writing (for example, leaving comments on a blog post), where one has the chance to read, reread, and edit one’s words before posting.

In a situation where one is assumed to have read one’s own words before clicking “post” or “submit comment”, beginning a sentence with “Um…” is a deliberate act, and is often considered hostile. The subtext is “your stupidity astounds me to the extent of rendering me speechless, but I’ll try to pull myself together to explain just how wrong and stupid you are.”

And to anyone whose response is “well, that’s not how *I* mean it!” I’ll paraphrase something from a discussion years ago on rec.arts.bodyart: “If you get the words ‘FUCK YOU’ tattooed on your forehead, that may mean *to you* ‘I love everybody and want to make love to everybody’, but that’s not how most people who see it will interpret it. And what *you* mean by it makes zero difference to how *they* interpret it.”

Moxicity- Is there some reason that you assume that you and your boyfriend are perfect and pure examples of the species and therefore represent all humans everywhere, ever? It may be true that you are simply more nurturing than your boyfriend. It’s quite another to generalize that to billions of other people.

You know my thoughts Re: you becoming nicer and less confrontational. I feel I have been a bad influence on you…Also Hektor – last time I was over I thought you were just trying to chew my laptop, but now I realize it was an attempt to write an advice for deleted commenters post! Sorry I wouldn’t let you near my comp. Next time you can use it as long as you try to keep the slobber to a minimum.

You know what’s one of the primary indicators of a dude having rapey inclinations? When he insists on imposing something on you (ie chivalry, whatever the hell that is) when you’ve told him you don’t want him to. Also, his insistence that he knows better what you really want than you do. Never a good sign. If there’s some special nostril motion cue though, I’m not hip to it.

And Dustin, if you see a woman being harassed and she’s being calm and smiley and polite, she knows she’s being harassed and that there could be danger afoot. She’s doing what she can, what women have learned for millenia to do, to de-escalate and get out of Dodge. Making blatantly horrified damsel-in-distress faces like in the silent movies has never actually gotten a lady out of a jam.

Uhm, … So, like, here I am, projecting myself into the mind of a puppy. And all I could do was channel that inner puppy and wag and pee all over the floor from the pure excitement of reading this post.

I apologize for the transphobia of my comment in equating penis-having to being a cisgendered male. I was blithely quoting Twisty (out of context) and didn’t think about the implications until way after it was posted (by that time I was at work, where I dare do very little personal browsing due to my company being Big Brother).

As far as the “um” thing goes, thank you Lexica for clarifying my intent on that. That was exactly what I meant by it. There was no ill intent towards anyone starting a sentence with Um other those who deliberately use it with hostile intentions.

Thanks, Dustin, for reminding me of one of the reasons I hate that I’m Southern, and also a lady. I’ve dealt with this shit all of my life, and it’s always gone something like, “Would you mind to treat me like a person?” “What the fuck are you too stupid to tell I’m being NICE!” with absolutely no regard to the fact that if they were being nice, I’d probably FEEL…you know, nice about it.

I’ve heard dudes pissing and moaning all my life about women not appericating their special efforts to treat them with respect, all the while totally lacking the self-awareness to see that to them, being nice to women requires special effort and that is pretty fucked up, and pretty telling as to how they view women in the first place.

Oh, my gosh, Moxicity! Thanks for your post! It has cleared up so much for me!

You see, thanks to your amazing sciencey facts, I have just found out that I am actually a man! Even though I had thought I was a woman! And the person I am married to is actually a woman! Even though I (and he) had thought he was a man!!

I know, right? But I can lift heavier things than him, and he is way more nurturing than me, so obviously we must both be suffering from hitherto undiagnosed gender dysphoria!

Hey, here’s a thought! Why don’t we just treat people as individuals, rather than try to draw statistical inferences from imaginary groups and then assign them to real people’s gender self-identifications! I know, right?

Note: I actually hate the term “gender dysphoria,” which is DSM-ese for “understandable rage and sorrow at constantly being misgendered by society and having one’s gender self-identification not taken seriously.”

While I really enjoy a thorough lashing of outright stupidity, re: I’m stalking the internet for places to deposit my opinion and deny the validity upon which a person’s entire work is based – I get frustrated with the overly sarcastic and combative comments aimed at other commentors. Granted, I’ve seen some outrageous comments and been happy to see thoughtful people disentangle the problematic assumptions they were based on. But I object to the cruelty some people use to attack commentors who are genuinely trying to engage in the conversation but may not have the same experience or the education in the field as others in this community.

I think these interactions get way heightened on the internet. I know I feel I have the freedom to be much snarkier in writing than I would feel proud of face-to-face with someone. We have to remember that we’re all humans behind these machines, many of which are earnest and trying their best to sort through things that don’t always seem to make sense, or have a solution, even to feminists.

While I think a lot of Moxicity’s gender assumptions are problematic, I do not feel she was particularly aggressive in her post, but rather provisional – she is unsure how to reconcile the pleasure she gets from certain male-female interactions with a feminist perspective. I can identify with this! She doesn’t quite articulate it this way, I know, but I see her struggling with that, and checking it in with the group. Isn’t that what this space is for? Does she deserve to be demeaned and shut up, perhaps turned away from a community that should instead be concerned with engaging on these issues?

Anyway, I really enjoy the discussions here at Tiger Beatdown. And I am heartened to see exchanges resolved like the one between Roesmoker and Just Some Trans Guy – with respect. If we only look for opportunities to tear each other apart we will never build anything together.

…and I just heard that NBC chime for those 90s “The More You Know” commercials in my head. Thanks for listening Hektor.

In response to Bernadette and JMS: …eh? First, I want to apologize for… what I did/said wrong, even though I’m not entirely sure what that was. Honestly: I’m putting this down to my relative inexperience with all these subjects, and I really really did not write with the intention to generalize or… whatever it is JSM accuses me of. *NOT* sarcasm: I truly did not get it, please point to a link or what have you if you don’t feel like explaining – and you don’t have to. Though I’d like to know where I feminism-failed 🙂

Also I probably should’ve thought twice before I commented like I did, since it basically turned into a review of my personal relationship and how I feel about it. I’m sorry again, and really: I tried not to and I don’t think I did hint or say that we are the perfect something-something or the epitome of something-something. What I was going for is that of course it would be ideal if, instead of chivalry, we could simply have mutual respect in society (isn’t this what feminism is going for also?), but in private we all act somewhat different. Because of societally generated gender roles I take advantage of my partner’s maleness because of my own laziness but I also reciprocate with things he is sometimes too lazy to do. And in addition to that I expect a certain , different kind of respect from him and he from me in public that signal we are together that may look like typical chivalry but isn’t exactly.

And like I said: perhaps shouldn’t have commented, since it’s not relevant and turned into a miniblog about *MEEEE*. Sorry!

And addendum: JSM, seriously, what? I understand being smacked down for trans-fail and feminism-fail (how else will I learn?), but was my comment really so ignorant? I am kind of baffled at the hostility in your comment. Yes, I needlessly waffled about my personal life, I regret my stupid drive-by commenting habits, but that’s just it – it was egocentric talk about *my* life. Wherein did I claim my narrow life experiences are a statistic?

@ Just Some Trans Guy – I also totally hear you about triggering things causing rage, when you keep seeing it over and over and finally you snap and maybe it seems over the top to that last person (FYI it didn’t to me because I saw how hurtful it is) – totally understandable. I feel that way about a lot of things especially rape culture. Like if I have to hear one more rape joke on The Daily Show or Colbert Report I am going to lose my shit. Or if someone else tells me to watch The Vampire Diaries when the first two episodes were so incredibly triggering for date rape and abuse that I couldn’t take it.

PS @Hilary, thank you. The more I see people compounding their original innocent/unintentional error with blustering and defensiveness, the more I try to work on my own response to being called out on things. That said, sometimes ignorance looks an awful lot like trolling. I think the followups usually make it clear which is which.

Moxicity- I can’t speak for JSM, but the major problem I had with your comment was this:

“Chivalry sucks, but men and women still have different characteristics, like I simply am more nurturing than him”

You do go on to mention societal factors as contributing, but you’re still taking a very biologically-determined, gender essentialist position which is going to raise a lot of hackles with people who do not fit within those preconceptions like, apparently, JSM, and even with people like me who do. I was not intending to mock you or be cruel, but I do think you ought to question why it you assume that your own personal circumstances are everyone else’s, or at least that yours are normal, which is the root of a great deal of general fail in this kind (or really any kind) of discussion, though I appreciate your willingness to learn.

Moxicity: Rather than “chivalry” with all its baggage, why don’t we all try to be nice to each other without making it gendered? I hold doors open for guys when I’m the first one there. It does throw some of them. Why don’t we give a man a seat on the bus if he’s older than us, or ill? Why don’t we prioritise people according to their need for help rather than their gender?

@Helen:
You said:Why don’t we prioritise people according to their need for help rather than their gender?

This comes across, to me, as being particularly ablist and not a very good way to approach social interaction in general. Just like the problems with ‘chivalry’, ‘prioritising’ people based on one’s own evaluation of whether or not they need to be helped can be extremely offensive or hurtful, and says nasty things about the person doing the evaluating and their way of being in the world.

A better thing might be to throw out ‘prioritising’ human beings altogether and instead treating everyone equally until such point as one individual explicitly indicates that they need help, or assistance, or whatever, and then (if we feel capable) aiding them best we can, but only them, and only for the amount of time it takes to accomplish their request?

It may sound overly pedantic, but as someone who often reads, to others, as ‘needing help’, I can say that being treated like a ward of society because I don’t move well, or as though it is everybody’s job to cheer me up because I am low on spoons, or whatever, often feels pretty shitty and demeaning and dehumanizing.

Basically: let’s give people the interactions they want, not what we think is good for them.

Thanks for the replies, people! 🙂 Reading my original comment *again* and reading your replies over, I get where I made the thought/verbal doodoo. I really am sorry – the tendency to try to “take things lightly” and spew stream-of-consciousness does not fit very well with these discussions, I’m starting to learn. Since my thinking is, partially, in the kyriarchy loop, which I’m trying to get rid of – but I’m not there yet.

I know it doesn’t *really* excuse me, but I am, after some months of reading, still very new to these subjects and though I try to expand and learn, it’s still incredibly easy to say stupid and hurtful things.

I’ll try to take what you pointed out to heart, and extra thanks to Hilary for… basically standing up for me/n00bs. I did get very defensive in my second post, but I suppose that’s the natural response to criticism. As Roesmoker also said, ideally you try to work on your responses and become better at receiving criticism and expanding your views.

In short – learning experience! Sadly at the expense of someones nerves and emotion (JSM & others who were potentially offended). Until next time, Tiger Beatdown.

1. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this post is so awesome. I died laughing at work and had to act like I was coughing or emitting weird noises or something.

2. Ok, so obviously the guy who write the comment was a douchetastic asshat, no further evidence needed. But what about stranger intervention into instances of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other fucked up stuff? How can we encourage people to feel like it’s important to confront street harassers, abusers, and assaulters (all things which happen more frequently to women (I think that is a true statement, am I wrong?)) without mkaing it about men “protecting” victimized women so they can keep seeing women as helpless and passive? Obviously we can encourage women to intervene more as well, but what about with men (male-identified/presenting as male)? How do we say “It is important for you, male-presenting individuals”, particularly because of your male privilege, rapport, and position of power with other men, to take a stand when you see women facing assualters, harassers, and abusers” without making it a “protect the dumb lady who can’t protect herself” patriarchy-fest?

(I’m assuming here that it is a good thing to intervene in these cases of public violence, particularly gendered violence. I suppose one could take issue with that assumption (although I’m skeptical of what the issue would be), but I think this is a fair assumption to start with.)

“@ Just Some Trans Guy – I also totally hear you about triggering things causing rage, when you keep seeing it over and over and finally you snap and maybe it seems over the top to that last person (FYI it didn’t to me because I saw how hurtful it is) – totally understandable. I feel that way about a lot of things especially rape culture.”

Sorry I missed this, but YES, god, rape culture is enough to make anyone walk around in a near constant rage.